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The Fine Art of Grace
Grace Lovejoy photographs the neglected masterpiece mosaics of the subway for her Master's Degree in Fine Arts at Columbia. Arthur writes on the meaning of a life in disquiet as an underground commuter in New York.
To breathe life into old mosaics and new meaning into Arthur, Grace invites him to assist in her creative venture.
In the mosaics underground Grace and Art embark on a journey with transformational possibilities to enable them to piece together the rich pixels of the Mosaic of Life.
Among fellow passengers in transit Grace and Art share a common humanity as their creative journey together begs the questions: Why do we live as we do? Where does real joy reside? How shall we endow being with meaning? In the inspiring humanity of the mosaics underground they find the City is the Grand Artisan piecing together its own mosaic masterpiece with the shards of human experience.
The power of perception and literary style of Lentz are reminiscent of Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas," Dostoyevsky's "Notes from Underground" and Pessoa's "Book of Disquiet." The book portrays 50 original photographs in full-color of masterpiece mosaics of the New York City Subway.
To breathe life into old mosaics and new meaning into Arthur, Grace invites him to assist in her creative venture.
In the mosaics underground Grace and Art embark on a journey with transformational possibilities to enable them to piece together the rich pixels of the Mosaic of Life.
Among fellow passengers in transit Grace and Art share a common humanity as their creative journey together begs the questions: Why do we live as we do? Where does real joy reside? How shall we endow being with meaning? In the inspiring humanity of the mosaics underground they find the City is the Grand Artisan piecing together its own mosaic masterpiece with the shards of human experience.
The power of perception and literary style of Lentz are reminiscent of Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas," Dostoyevsky's "Notes from Underground" and Pessoa's "Book of Disquiet." The book portrays 50 original photographs in full-color of masterpiece mosaics of the New York City Subway.
264 pages, Paperback
First published January 10, 2016
209 people want to read
About the author
David B. Lentz
17 books343 followersBorn in Woburn, Massachusetts, David B. Lentz is an alumnus of Bates College as well as the Yale and Wesleyan Writers' Conferences. He is a member of the Center for Fiction in New York, the Royal Society of Literature in London, the Poetry Society of America, the Academy of American Poets, and the Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He has published seven novels: "The Fine Art of Grace", "For the Beauty of the Earth", "AmericA, Inc.", "Bloomsday", "Bourbon Street", "The Day Trader" and "The Silver King." He has written two stage plays, "Bloomsday: A Tragicomedy" and "AmericA, Inc." Lentz published three volumes of poetry in "Old Greenwich Odes", "Sonnets from New England: Love Songs" and "Sonnets on the Common Man" in the latter two of which he introduced new sonnet forms. He created a new model of critical literary theory for reviewing novels in his book, "Novel Criticism." Selected excerpts from his collection of literary works among his novels, stage plays and poetry are available in "Essential Lentz." Three of his novels and one of his stage plays have been read for Pulitzer Prizes in Letters and Drama, respectively, but none has short-listed. Lentz has served Bates College as an Alumnus-in-Admissions (18 years), Stamford-Greenwich Literacy Volunteers of America, Midnight Run for New York City Homeless, Healing the Children Northeast, Inc. (Board), Hurricane Katrina JazzAid: New Orleans, Hope + Heroes Children's Cancer Foundation, St. Baldricks Foundation for Children's Cancer Research and as a Volunteer in St. Paul's Chapel at Ground Zero. Lentz has lived in the Garden District of New Orleans, Boston's Back Bay, Houston, Philadelphia's Main Line and Greenwich, Connecticut.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 28, 2017
"Lentz is a writer of rare acuity." - Corey Mesler, Author of "Memphis Movie: A Novel"
"A major writer." - Terry Richard Bazes, Author of "Goldsmith's Return: A Novel"
"A writer of formidable scope and ability." - Bruce McLaren, Author of "The Plain of Dead Cities: A Syrian Tale"
"Lentz weaves evocative images as metaphors of the human condition." – John Sibley, Author of "Being and Homelessness"
"His pixelism is a 21st century, digital metaphor." - Redding Pilot
"Masterful. Timeless." - Roxana Bowgen, Author of "Agapanthus Rising"
“This book had a great impact on my life.” — Marilyn Maro, White Plains, NY
"The Fine Art of Grace" was workshopped at the 2016 Yale Writers' Conference in New Haven.
"A major writer." - Terry Richard Bazes, Author of "Goldsmith's Return: A Novel"
"A writer of formidable scope and ability." - Bruce McLaren, Author of "The Plain of Dead Cities: A Syrian Tale"
"Lentz weaves evocative images as metaphors of the human condition." – John Sibley, Author of "Being and Homelessness"
"His pixelism is a 21st century, digital metaphor." - Redding Pilot
"Masterful. Timeless." - Roxana Bowgen, Author of "Agapanthus Rising"
“This book had a great impact on my life.” — Marilyn Maro, White Plains, NY
"The Fine Art of Grace" was workshopped at the 2016 Yale Writers' Conference in New Haven.
December 7, 2016
This is a mostly autobiographical novel about everyman life, the daily grind and its beauty, the hopes fulfilled and dashed, the text itself aching with both the desire to own art’s grand mosaic and the joy of producing but a tile in it, a tile with tiles within tiles of thoughts within thoughts, cascading with the disorder of an explosion, and yet making some kind of beautiful pattern at the same time, a pattern that forms a thin, semi-durable crust above a deep, black and horrible existential sea, whose waves, ever ready to crash, throw everything back into chaos at any moment.
Lentz frequently namechecks other authors and their works and provides contextual reviews of texts that support the narrative and theories laid out somehow, but he never makes the reader feel under-read, as postmodernist “academic” works often wilfully do—and a glance at his Goodreads profile shows that he could if he wanted to!
I tried and failed to find a quote from Gass’ about his “The Tunnel”, that he thought it would be so original no one would want to publish it—thankfully, Lentz couldn’t be further from this pretension. But the tone of the prose itself reminded me most of Gass, clear and yet complex, its density apparent but meaning often elusive, layered with substructures, the symbol of the underground trains reminiscent of Gass’ Tunnel, the references to mosaics like the shattered and scattered Infinite Jest. There are also sonnets and other forms of poetry, diary entries, letters, but mostly there are meanderings and musings, given in the clipped and succinct style of Nietzsche’s aphoristic works.
For a work of literature, there is so much love and sincerity in it, towards the protagonist’s wife and Life itself, which is refreshing and a demonstration of Lentz’s talent: writers who say literature has to be dark or negative to be important aren’t trying hard enough.
There is a plot, but a slim one at that, just like the plot of Life: there might be a narrative to our lives, a discernible sequence, but it hardly seems like the most important thing about it, so how could you reflect life properly if this was what you focused on? We’re all bound by the need to summarise ourselves in neat three-minute packages to one another. We all sigh with the melancholy of doing such injustice to ourselves, and since this is partly Lentz’s topic, he can only represent it by stepping outside of plot to provide backbone and flesh.
I’m glad this master can examine his life and find it brimming with shimmering, fragmented joys, because he deserves a hell of a lot more recognition than he has.
Lentz frequently namechecks other authors and their works and provides contextual reviews of texts that support the narrative and theories laid out somehow, but he never makes the reader feel under-read, as postmodernist “academic” works often wilfully do—and a glance at his Goodreads profile shows that he could if he wanted to!
I tried and failed to find a quote from Gass’ about his “The Tunnel”, that he thought it would be so original no one would want to publish it—thankfully, Lentz couldn’t be further from this pretension. But the tone of the prose itself reminded me most of Gass, clear and yet complex, its density apparent but meaning often elusive, layered with substructures, the symbol of the underground trains reminiscent of Gass’ Tunnel, the references to mosaics like the shattered and scattered Infinite Jest. There are also sonnets and other forms of poetry, diary entries, letters, but mostly there are meanderings and musings, given in the clipped and succinct style of Nietzsche’s aphoristic works.
For a work of literature, there is so much love and sincerity in it, towards the protagonist’s wife and Life itself, which is refreshing and a demonstration of Lentz’s talent: writers who say literature has to be dark or negative to be important aren’t trying hard enough.
There is a plot, but a slim one at that, just like the plot of Life: there might be a narrative to our lives, a discernible sequence, but it hardly seems like the most important thing about it, so how could you reflect life properly if this was what you focused on? We’re all bound by the need to summarise ourselves in neat three-minute packages to one another. We all sigh with the melancholy of doing such injustice to ourselves, and since this is partly Lentz’s topic, he can only represent it by stepping outside of plot to provide backbone and flesh.
I’m glad this master can examine his life and find it brimming with shimmering, fragmented joys, because he deserves a hell of a lot more recognition than he has.
December 11, 2016
In Fine Art of the Grace, a post-modern narrative with play on the words Art and Grace: Arthur and Grace being the main characters, David Lentz created a rich mosaic of themes and structures worthy of an artist. The book is a mosaic of narratives: from poems to prose, form diary entries to book reviews, from sermons to Biblical excerpts to theological essays. The reader will find mosaics of New York subway walls, and even mosaics of book covers and the pages of Fine Art of the Grace. The book is a mosaic of life moments: from the mosaic of characters on the subway as Art and Grace travel in the trains to Lincoln Center, to reflection while being stuck in the subway, which is a required tourist attraction in the city, to a book review of Ferdinand Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet on existential neurosis and nihilistic absurdity.
By putting the pieces of the mosaic together, Lentz has created a picture of the lives of Art and Grace and a mosaic of these characters. That picture: it is funny; it is sad; it is mundane life with deep insights. It is art, with grace, i.e. graceful art. A refreshing read.
September 15, 2017
This review is from my first reading of this book. (there will be a re-read in the future as this book is so thought provoking and so complex I'm never going to take it all on the first read.
I wasn't sure what to expect from this book but I got an idea of what was to come early on when the following line appears:
"No one gets out of this Life alive"
Wow! I want that on a T-shirt.
The book is like a mosaic, as you move through the main story (called "Watch List") bits and pieces are repeated/re-used. It is made up of diary entries, letters, book reviews, epiphanies, bible quotes and prose. I've been a fan of David's book reviews on Goodreads for a few years now, he always has an interesting take on the book, how the reviews are used here is very clever, they will be referenced a few times throughout the book. One thing I couldn't quite get my head around was whether this was some kind of semi-fiction, it certainly did feel real. A few things I found interesting were the use of capital letters, some words were constantly capitalised (Art, Life, Love, Grace and Time are a few) this cleverly shows how important those things are to the author. Also the two main characters are called Art and Grace, took me ages to realise those names were in the title of the book.
Not a single word is wasted and a seemingly random letter requesting help to move a mailbox stuck with me and with each new page I was hoping to see the reply.
Included are a number of pictures of the mosaic's to be found on the Underground, some of them are beautiful, people always seem to be in a rush for their next train and I wonder how many people actually notice the works of art.
I have really enjoyed this book and it has added a number of books to me reading list.
Blog post review is here. https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2017...
I wasn't sure what to expect from this book but I got an idea of what was to come early on when the following line appears:
"No one gets out of this Life alive"
Wow! I want that on a T-shirt.
The book is like a mosaic, as you move through the main story (called "Watch List") bits and pieces are repeated/re-used. It is made up of diary entries, letters, book reviews, epiphanies, bible quotes and prose. I've been a fan of David's book reviews on Goodreads for a few years now, he always has an interesting take on the book, how the reviews are used here is very clever, they will be referenced a few times throughout the book. One thing I couldn't quite get my head around was whether this was some kind of semi-fiction, it certainly did feel real. A few things I found interesting were the use of capital letters, some words were constantly capitalised (Art, Life, Love, Grace and Time are a few) this cleverly shows how important those things are to the author. Also the two main characters are called Art and Grace, took me ages to realise those names were in the title of the book.
Not a single word is wasted and a seemingly random letter requesting help to move a mailbox stuck with me and with each new page I was hoping to see the reply.
Included are a number of pictures of the mosaic's to be found on the Underground, some of them are beautiful, people always seem to be in a rush for their next train and I wonder how many people actually notice the works of art.
I have really enjoyed this book and it has added a number of books to me reading list.
Blog post review is here. https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2017...
October 2, 2016
THE FINE ART OF GRACE BY DAVID LENTZ: A RICH LITERARY MOSAIC
David Lentz’s impressive and absorbing novel, The Fine Art of Grace, poses two fundamental questions—one existential, the other artistic. How can we live authentic, meaningful lives in a world apparently inclined to destroy us; and what place will literature have in contemporary life?
Who among us has not been stuck on a stalled train, or in hours of standstill traffic? Who has not deal with identity theft and other forms of insidious and nefarious outside harassment? Who among us has not asked himself, “How did this happen to me?” This is the quotidian moment of doubt and despair that David Lentz uses as a point of departure for an adventure in which he explores the most confounding and important issues we face.
Traditional fiction for the most part has delineated personal relationships—sibling rivalry, unrequited love, marital unrest, strong or perverse parent-child attachments. These conflicts have allowed narratives to thread our attention through familiar characters and precise situations and to follow them to their conclusions. While the problems they’ve treated are intractable, they’re also easy to identify and objectify.
The Fine Art of Grace breaks with traditional fiction. It is unconcerned with personal conflicts and intrigue. Rather, it focuses on one individual’s struggle against implacable forces, both visible and invisible. Its protagonist is a good, thoughtful man, Art Lovejoy, who has a wonderful wife and family. Art feels “disquiet” and questions his desire to live, due to the cumulative insults inflicted on his condition. Art’s work, marathon commute, and interactions with government are demoralizing, bordering on annihilating. Art’s struggle and quest to understand and cope with his malaise comprises the “plot” of The Fine Art of Grace.
By addressing the conflict a human being has with his life, Lentz puts himself in the modern tradition of Hamsun’s Hunger, Sartre’s Nausea, Camus’s The Stranger, Yates’s Revolutionary Road, and many of Orwell’s non-fiction writings. Lentz fast-forwards on the path of these 20th century giants to limn the individual’s struggle for self-affirmation in a violent and indifferent world.
In The Fine Art of Grace, the nemesis is not one evil miscreant, but the many-headed hydra of circumstance and systemic abuses to which an ordinary individual is routinely subjected. The hero, Arthur Lovejoy, is trying to live a decent life in a world that seems bent on crushing him.
“The performance of the will, even when driven by a fair intellect, is an unfair match against the vast, random powers of the universe,” is one of many trenchant epigrams in The Fine Art of Grace and it is the key insight of this novel around which the spokes of its great circle spin.
The Fine Art of Grace is a novel of ideas in the tradition of The Magic Mountain, Nausea and The Plague. It explores doubt, despair, reason, existentialism and faith within tangible and relatable situations we all encounter. It poses questions Freud posed in Civilization and Its Discontents. Like Freud, Lentz prescribes art and work as therapeutic responses. Unlike Freud, Lentz poses faith and grace as counterweights to the savagery of nature and society. Lentz phrases his ideas with clever terms of his own invention, like Kurt Vonnegut, to give the profound subject an immediacy and lightness.
David Lentz is a poet and his style is an unnamed character in his work. In a superb scene, he describes jazz with eloquence and appreciation, and his affinity for the virtuosity and versatility of jazz musicians is understandable, given his proclivity for riffing in so many rhetorical styles and formats. These literary chops are not purely for show; they are instrumental in developing character. The Fine Art of Grace portrays his protagonist not by translating his thoughts, but by using the rhetorical paradigms in which he thinks, works and lives—journal entries, book reviews, religious texts he reads and a business presentation.
It is a pleasure to watch a performer enjoy his work. In the same vein as Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and Mailer’s “Advertisements for Myself,” Lentz has composed The Fine Art of Grace as a contemporary “Anthology of Myself,” deploying an array of rhetorical paradigms—free verse, sonnet, diary, literary criticism, sermon, parody, satire, melodrama and suspense—to bring together the shards of a fragmented life into one integrated whole.
If the law is what the judges say it is, as Chief Justice Hughes once opined, then literature is what the writers say it is. Will novels be disposable entertainments and the grist materials for the mass media culture machine or an art form with aura and craftsmanship that bears the distinctive touch of the artist? David Lentz has made his voice heard; he is squarely in the camp of the artists.
Dr. Johnson suggested that a work of literature should instruct and delight. Lentz does both. Along with cogent analyses of philosophers and writers whose works form the intellectual foundation for The Fine Art of Grace, Lentz focuses on mindfulness, a heightened individual awareness of one’s thoughts, feelings and environment. The Fine Art of Grace has not only enriched my life by the pleasure of reading it, but by prompting me to be more mindful of my environment. For instance, I’ve always admired subway mosaics but henceforth I’ll pay more attention to them in the New York underground.
The Fine Art of Grace conveys a unity that is characteristic of the finest works of art. Its theme of psychological fragmentation is mirrored stylistically by a medley of styles, rhetorical forms, popular idioms and carefully phrased philosophical pronouncements. In addition, color photographs of subway mosaics adorn the first pages of most chapters to provide a visual counterpoint to the multi-layered narrative and clash of viewpoints. If you love books that treat issues and problems that matter most, that challenge your intellect while engaging your emotions, you will enjoy The Fine Art of Grace.
David Lentz’s impressive and absorbing novel, The Fine Art of Grace, poses two fundamental questions—one existential, the other artistic. How can we live authentic, meaningful lives in a world apparently inclined to destroy us; and what place will literature have in contemporary life?
Who among us has not been stuck on a stalled train, or in hours of standstill traffic? Who has not deal with identity theft and other forms of insidious and nefarious outside harassment? Who among us has not asked himself, “How did this happen to me?” This is the quotidian moment of doubt and despair that David Lentz uses as a point of departure for an adventure in which he explores the most confounding and important issues we face.
Traditional fiction for the most part has delineated personal relationships—sibling rivalry, unrequited love, marital unrest, strong or perverse parent-child attachments. These conflicts have allowed narratives to thread our attention through familiar characters and precise situations and to follow them to their conclusions. While the problems they’ve treated are intractable, they’re also easy to identify and objectify.
The Fine Art of Grace breaks with traditional fiction. It is unconcerned with personal conflicts and intrigue. Rather, it focuses on one individual’s struggle against implacable forces, both visible and invisible. Its protagonist is a good, thoughtful man, Art Lovejoy, who has a wonderful wife and family. Art feels “disquiet” and questions his desire to live, due to the cumulative insults inflicted on his condition. Art’s work, marathon commute, and interactions with government are demoralizing, bordering on annihilating. Art’s struggle and quest to understand and cope with his malaise comprises the “plot” of The Fine Art of Grace.
By addressing the conflict a human being has with his life, Lentz puts himself in the modern tradition of Hamsun’s Hunger, Sartre’s Nausea, Camus’s The Stranger, Yates’s Revolutionary Road, and many of Orwell’s non-fiction writings. Lentz fast-forwards on the path of these 20th century giants to limn the individual’s struggle for self-affirmation in a violent and indifferent world.
In The Fine Art of Grace, the nemesis is not one evil miscreant, but the many-headed hydra of circumstance and systemic abuses to which an ordinary individual is routinely subjected. The hero, Arthur Lovejoy, is trying to live a decent life in a world that seems bent on crushing him.
“The performance of the will, even when driven by a fair intellect, is an unfair match against the vast, random powers of the universe,” is one of many trenchant epigrams in The Fine Art of Grace and it is the key insight of this novel around which the spokes of its great circle spin.
The Fine Art of Grace is a novel of ideas in the tradition of The Magic Mountain, Nausea and The Plague. It explores doubt, despair, reason, existentialism and faith within tangible and relatable situations we all encounter. It poses questions Freud posed in Civilization and Its Discontents. Like Freud, Lentz prescribes art and work as therapeutic responses. Unlike Freud, Lentz poses faith and grace as counterweights to the savagery of nature and society. Lentz phrases his ideas with clever terms of his own invention, like Kurt Vonnegut, to give the profound subject an immediacy and lightness.
David Lentz is a poet and his style is an unnamed character in his work. In a superb scene, he describes jazz with eloquence and appreciation, and his affinity for the virtuosity and versatility of jazz musicians is understandable, given his proclivity for riffing in so many rhetorical styles and formats. These literary chops are not purely for show; they are instrumental in developing character. The Fine Art of Grace portrays his protagonist not by translating his thoughts, but by using the rhetorical paradigms in which he thinks, works and lives—journal entries, book reviews, religious texts he reads and a business presentation.
It is a pleasure to watch a performer enjoy his work. In the same vein as Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and Mailer’s “Advertisements for Myself,” Lentz has composed The Fine Art of Grace as a contemporary “Anthology of Myself,” deploying an array of rhetorical paradigms—free verse, sonnet, diary, literary criticism, sermon, parody, satire, melodrama and suspense—to bring together the shards of a fragmented life into one integrated whole.
If the law is what the judges say it is, as Chief Justice Hughes once opined, then literature is what the writers say it is. Will novels be disposable entertainments and the grist materials for the mass media culture machine or an art form with aura and craftsmanship that bears the distinctive touch of the artist? David Lentz has made his voice heard; he is squarely in the camp of the artists.
Dr. Johnson suggested that a work of literature should instruct and delight. Lentz does both. Along with cogent analyses of philosophers and writers whose works form the intellectual foundation for The Fine Art of Grace, Lentz focuses on mindfulness, a heightened individual awareness of one’s thoughts, feelings and environment. The Fine Art of Grace has not only enriched my life by the pleasure of reading it, but by prompting me to be more mindful of my environment. For instance, I’ve always admired subway mosaics but henceforth I’ll pay more attention to them in the New York underground.
The Fine Art of Grace conveys a unity that is characteristic of the finest works of art. Its theme of psychological fragmentation is mirrored stylistically by a medley of styles, rhetorical forms, popular idioms and carefully phrased philosophical pronouncements. In addition, color photographs of subway mosaics adorn the first pages of most chapters to provide a visual counterpoint to the multi-layered narrative and clash of viewpoints. If you love books that treat issues and problems that matter most, that challenge your intellect while engaging your emotions, you will enjoy The Fine Art of Grace.
February 4, 2016
28 jan 16...whew! finally! i am able to open this kindle purchase! heh! i'd seen it listed last year, saw it was coming this year, have read a few other titles from lentz, enjoyed those reads, was really looking forward to this one, liked the summary, like the cover, bought it...took it with me when we left last monday for a destination to the south. kindle. i said that.
tried to open it...no go. and me a carpenter. heh! where's a 4th-grader when you need one? got home bout four o'clock, texted my wife that i'd made it, that there was about two feet (of snow) in the driveway, more out by the road, a bunch of mail, newspapers, hit send. go and blow snow...took about a hour and half. lady friend stopped, worried, said wife had contacted her. i go and look at my cell phone...still in the process of sending my text from an hour and a half ago...wife is in situation where voice call isn't easy....the arms, you see. wrapped. anyway. looks like i can get started on this one after i thaw out...got it to open after a fashion, no 4th grader involved.
29 jan 16
heh! could be the weather. could be...something else. heh! yeah, so, it is rare that a read motivates me to look for information, in this case, mosaics in new york. cue that up in a search engine. page not available more than once, variations on that theme...i suspect the same website. that...or those happy campers in utah. i'd like to take this time to extend greetings from the authoritarian-ship.
notes to self and others
this is living up to what i expected...and why exactly did i expect so much? i'm not sure. but this read is going along well. i really like it thus far. there's a number of narrative devices at work...sonnets...that bring to mind lentz's previous work, Sonnets on the Common Man: New Hampshire Verse...i mention the mosaics. are there mosaics in new york visible underground? i will presume yes. pixel-ated. so say we all. there are a number of reviews from arthur lovejoy...ij...notes from underground...an amusing tale about hemingway and another about nobody in particular though the one has a big beak and the other is purple. curious to see where it all leads. onward ever onward.
1st of february 2016
i saw the first mosquito of the season yesterday, shoveling a trailer roof free of snow...'bout waist-deep on the back part, more in the valleys. we get snow, winter. (you're supposed to laugh...that's a joke.) and...could be that there were two mosquitoes...saw another when we finished, get in the truck...ah! so nice to sit down...one bouncing along the dash. mind you, there is easily two to three feet of snow cover, more in places, and the only place where there is less is where we drive. so...i lamented the death of this mosquito on the dash...he? she? transgender?...how am i supposed to think of the mosquito? out here on the perimeter, we are not privy to the times.
one thing i also lament with lentz is his anti-hunting attitude. i hunt. i make no apology for that. hunting is a thoroughly enjoyable experience and i do all i can...time spent in the bush equals...eventually...a "successful" hunt. but...i've seen this attitude in two reads now, this and the other, the last. oh well. do i put on my bowling shoes? throw a strike?
not much time to read...wife in stitches...me, here there everywhere. dead mosquitoes on the dash.
more later.
3 feb 16
finished. 4-stars. there were moments when i thought man this is a 5-star read....other moments when i did not believe that. i like what lentz has done here. just a touch of the different, storyline, telling, i'm talking. there's another title of his that is mentioned in the last page, a kind of bio page...something about...ummm, reading/criticism...that i am presuming is...portrayed? here? perhaps.
what with the reviews by art...art-ter...thinking of aunt lois now...arter...or, my hearing, one. failing. arter? bonehead. heh! okay, yeah, so this one it does have a tad of the traditional storyline...and then there's more...employs a number of devices, none entirely unique, though perhaps uniquely employed. so say we all. one of many. this. that. the other.
and seriously, upon my word, there are moments of laughter. a kind of catch-22 humor...great story, and to see some of that kind of humor reflected herein...me, self-employed now for more than 25 years. any one who has braved our new world and who has hung a shingle out for all to see knows what i'm talkin' 'bout.
yeah, so...anyway, give it a shot. i found it both enjoyable and more...got me thinking about the mechanics of the story here. i used to pull apart the five-cent car ma got at the five-and-dime down the street...the ten o'clock girls they were called, her and pat, pushing strollers. heh! and the way life repeats. me. a three-year-old shoplifter. not. i wanted gum, lady charged ma for it, if did not have it. perhaps i put it in the toy aisle. and years later...years later. life in a small town.
sorry for the distraction...it's just that federal and or state agents shot a trespassing man in oregon recently and the world is mum. had been called a terrorist. and me...a three-year-old shoplifter who graduated to garage roofs, ladies shaking their fist at me, doing the sister act therein the living room.
a movie calls.
tried to open it...no go. and me a carpenter. heh! where's a 4th-grader when you need one? got home bout four o'clock, texted my wife that i'd made it, that there was about two feet (of snow) in the driveway, more out by the road, a bunch of mail, newspapers, hit send. go and blow snow...took about a hour and half. lady friend stopped, worried, said wife had contacted her. i go and look at my cell phone...still in the process of sending my text from an hour and a half ago...wife is in situation where voice call isn't easy....the arms, you see. wrapped. anyway. looks like i can get started on this one after i thaw out...got it to open after a fashion, no 4th grader involved.
29 jan 16
heh! could be the weather. could be...something else. heh! yeah, so, it is rare that a read motivates me to look for information, in this case, mosaics in new york. cue that up in a search engine. page not available more than once, variations on that theme...i suspect the same website. that...or those happy campers in utah. i'd like to take this time to extend greetings from the authoritarian-ship.
notes to self and others
this is living up to what i expected...and why exactly did i expect so much? i'm not sure. but this read is going along well. i really like it thus far. there's a number of narrative devices at work...sonnets...that bring to mind lentz's previous work, Sonnets on the Common Man: New Hampshire Verse...i mention the mosaics. are there mosaics in new york visible underground? i will presume yes. pixel-ated. so say we all. there are a number of reviews from arthur lovejoy...ij...notes from underground...an amusing tale about hemingway and another about nobody in particular though the one has a big beak and the other is purple. curious to see where it all leads. onward ever onward.
1st of february 2016
i saw the first mosquito of the season yesterday, shoveling a trailer roof free of snow...'bout waist-deep on the back part, more in the valleys. we get snow, winter. (you're supposed to laugh...that's a joke.) and...could be that there were two mosquitoes...saw another when we finished, get in the truck...ah! so nice to sit down...one bouncing along the dash. mind you, there is easily two to three feet of snow cover, more in places, and the only place where there is less is where we drive. so...i lamented the death of this mosquito on the dash...he? she? transgender?...how am i supposed to think of the mosquito? out here on the perimeter, we are not privy to the times.
one thing i also lament with lentz is his anti-hunting attitude. i hunt. i make no apology for that. hunting is a thoroughly enjoyable experience and i do all i can...time spent in the bush equals...eventually...a "successful" hunt. but...i've seen this attitude in two reads now, this and the other, the last. oh well. do i put on my bowling shoes? throw a strike?
not much time to read...wife in stitches...me, here there everywhere. dead mosquitoes on the dash.
more later.
3 feb 16
finished. 4-stars. there were moments when i thought man this is a 5-star read....other moments when i did not believe that. i like what lentz has done here. just a touch of the different, storyline, telling, i'm talking. there's another title of his that is mentioned in the last page, a kind of bio page...something about...ummm, reading/criticism...that i am presuming is...portrayed? here? perhaps.
what with the reviews by art...art-ter...thinking of aunt lois now...arter...or, my hearing, one. failing. arter? bonehead. heh! okay, yeah, so this one it does have a tad of the traditional storyline...and then there's more...employs a number of devices, none entirely unique, though perhaps uniquely employed. so say we all. one of many. this. that. the other.
and seriously, upon my word, there are moments of laughter. a kind of catch-22 humor...great story, and to see some of that kind of humor reflected herein...me, self-employed now for more than 25 years. any one who has braved our new world and who has hung a shingle out for all to see knows what i'm talkin' 'bout.
yeah, so...anyway, give it a shot. i found it both enjoyable and more...got me thinking about the mechanics of the story here. i used to pull apart the five-cent car ma got at the five-and-dime down the street...the ten o'clock girls they were called, her and pat, pushing strollers. heh! and the way life repeats. me. a three-year-old shoplifter. not. i wanted gum, lady charged ma for it, if did not have it. perhaps i put it in the toy aisle. and years later...years later. life in a small town.
sorry for the distraction...it's just that federal and or state agents shot a trespassing man in oregon recently and the world is mum. had been called a terrorist. and me...a three-year-old shoplifter who graduated to garage roofs, ladies shaking their fist at me, doing the sister act therein the living room.
a movie calls.
December 13, 2016
David Lentz’s newest novel defies categorization -- quite intentionally.
That is because its unfolding storyline is recurrently interrupted by a dizzying variety of only apparently unrelated prose fragments: sonnets, book reviews, popular songs, quotations from Dante and Rimbaud -- even a letter to a congresswoman, asking for a letter carrier to bring mail to a postbox closer to the home of the narrator’s 87-year-old mother. That isn’t to say that there isn’t a plot here: there is.
The two main characters of this story are Art and Grace Lovejoy. Art and Grace are, on the one hand, personifications. But they are also a modern couple living recognizably modern lives. Art is a freelance writer, a poet and also an inventor filing a patent for computer software. Grace is working on a thesis for her MFA in photography at Columbia. The photographs that comprise Grace’s thesis are of the beautiful mosaics that decorate New York City’s subway tunnels – an otherwise dehumanizing subterranean world where Art’s ill-paying freelance career requires him to spend too much of his time and energy. So the subway where the Lovejoys pause to appreciate the mosaics becomes one of the novel’s governing metaphors: Art’s first-person narration is a note from the underground, a chronicle of a “disquiet” for which each lovely mosaic is a palliative “gift of Grace.” The reader comes to understand that the mosaics are what Arthur calls “pixels” – the isolated fragments of a larger picture – and that “pixelation” is another of the novel’s major metaphors. That is because, as Lentz’s protagonists says, “Reality is unclear and informs us of its essence expressed by a pixelated aspect.” So the novel’s technique of narrative fragmentation, the repeated interruptions of the storyline, has been designed to be a depiction of the fragmentation and only partially discerned meaning inherent in life itself. In another of the novel’s metaphors, the “pixelated” nature of reality is compared to the panels of a “Rubik’s Cube” that can only be brought into alignment by the miracle of Love.
A “21st century underground man,” Arthur Lovejoy’s life is a Kafkesque nightmare. For he suffers from what would be a paranoid delusion, except that his suspicion that the world is out to get him is entirely justified by the fact that his “personal privacy” is continually invaded by spying drones and government-controlled surveillance cameras. Like all of us, he is “a passenger in transit,” forever scurrying back and forth like a mole in a maze. Arthur is Lentz’s auto-fictional self-portrait of the artist as a not-so-young Sisyphus, doomed to an eternity of repetitive and meaningless labor. In another of the novel’s metaphors, Art Lovejoy’s travels through the New York City subway system are the wanderings of a modern-day Odysseus who is always in danger of being shipwrecked by the Sirens. Grace is his Penelope, the home base and lodestar of his underground journey. She is also his Beatrice, leading him out of this hell.
But a linear plot is not what “The Fine Art of Grace” is all about. Instead, it is a tale that is really about its digressions. For it is a book that is organized more thematically than by the unfolding of a story – and the most fundamental of these themes is that Life’s struggles and hardships are counterpoised by its enduring blessings. At times this book is a song of Thanksgiving to this loveliness. Many of its sentences are a series of fragmentary meditations on the mystery of life, suffering and grace
In the end it is Grace who puts Art “back together piece by piece.” When a subway nearly kills them both, their deliverance triggers Arthur’s final epiphany. Suddenly the “Cloud of unknowing” lifts and Art finds himself purged of his disquiet. There is much to admire in this complex and subtle book.
That is because its unfolding storyline is recurrently interrupted by a dizzying variety of only apparently unrelated prose fragments: sonnets, book reviews, popular songs, quotations from Dante and Rimbaud -- even a letter to a congresswoman, asking for a letter carrier to bring mail to a postbox closer to the home of the narrator’s 87-year-old mother. That isn’t to say that there isn’t a plot here: there is.
The two main characters of this story are Art and Grace Lovejoy. Art and Grace are, on the one hand, personifications. But they are also a modern couple living recognizably modern lives. Art is a freelance writer, a poet and also an inventor filing a patent for computer software. Grace is working on a thesis for her MFA in photography at Columbia. The photographs that comprise Grace’s thesis are of the beautiful mosaics that decorate New York City’s subway tunnels – an otherwise dehumanizing subterranean world where Art’s ill-paying freelance career requires him to spend too much of his time and energy. So the subway where the Lovejoys pause to appreciate the mosaics becomes one of the novel’s governing metaphors: Art’s first-person narration is a note from the underground, a chronicle of a “disquiet” for which each lovely mosaic is a palliative “gift of Grace.” The reader comes to understand that the mosaics are what Arthur calls “pixels” – the isolated fragments of a larger picture – and that “pixelation” is another of the novel’s major metaphors. That is because, as Lentz’s protagonists says, “Reality is unclear and informs us of its essence expressed by a pixelated aspect.” So the novel’s technique of narrative fragmentation, the repeated interruptions of the storyline, has been designed to be a depiction of the fragmentation and only partially discerned meaning inherent in life itself. In another of the novel’s metaphors, the “pixelated” nature of reality is compared to the panels of a “Rubik’s Cube” that can only be brought into alignment by the miracle of Love.
A “21st century underground man,” Arthur Lovejoy’s life is a Kafkesque nightmare. For he suffers from what would be a paranoid delusion, except that his suspicion that the world is out to get him is entirely justified by the fact that his “personal privacy” is continually invaded by spying drones and government-controlled surveillance cameras. Like all of us, he is “a passenger in transit,” forever scurrying back and forth like a mole in a maze. Arthur is Lentz’s auto-fictional self-portrait of the artist as a not-so-young Sisyphus, doomed to an eternity of repetitive and meaningless labor. In another of the novel’s metaphors, Art Lovejoy’s travels through the New York City subway system are the wanderings of a modern-day Odysseus who is always in danger of being shipwrecked by the Sirens. Grace is his Penelope, the home base and lodestar of his underground journey. She is also his Beatrice, leading him out of this hell.
But a linear plot is not what “The Fine Art of Grace” is all about. Instead, it is a tale that is really about its digressions. For it is a book that is organized more thematically than by the unfolding of a story – and the most fundamental of these themes is that Life’s struggles and hardships are counterpoised by its enduring blessings. At times this book is a song of Thanksgiving to this loveliness. Many of its sentences are a series of fragmentary meditations on the mystery of life, suffering and grace
In the end it is Grace who puts Art “back together piece by piece.” When a subway nearly kills them both, their deliverance triggers Arthur’s final epiphany. Suddenly the “Cloud of unknowing” lifts and Art finds himself purged of his disquiet. There is much to admire in this complex and subtle book.
November 5, 2016
Quite possibly one of the finest books I have ever read in my entire reading life. I know this much to be true: David Lentz is also quite possibly one of the finest authors living today. He is THE hardest working author I have ever had the pleasure of getting to know. His prose is poetic, elegant and deep.
If you read only one book this season, make it this one! All of my friends and family members are in for a treat because I am going to order copies for them for the upcoming holiday season.
Rock on, my Goodreads Friends!!! It's a GREAT reading life because of supreme authors like David Lentz and incredible works like "The Fine Art of Grace: A Novel".
If you read only one book this season, make it this one! All of my friends and family members are in for a treat because I am going to order copies for them for the upcoming holiday season.
Rock on, my Goodreads Friends!!! It's a GREAT reading life because of supreme authors like David Lentz and incredible works like "The Fine Art of Grace: A Novel".
July 31, 2019
Excellent book!
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